Most of these comparisons are - as you say - meaningless. However, they are useful in terms of trying to discern the possible reasons for the discrepancies later on. Now Sweden's calculation - which so far appears to be correct - is that their demographics and geography allowed them to trade a few thousand deaths more than their neighbours for keeping the economy going.
Perfectly reasonable and rational thing to do, but the point is that to extrapolate from that to the UK, where a similar strategy would certainly have resulted in a much sharper spike in deaths (possibly 100,000-ish by now), hospitals overwhelmed and pictures of bodies stacked in hospital corridors is unhelpful an ignores the wider factors.